Episode 86: The Devil’s Fauna by Michael Stone
Mike Stone (who hates 3-D even more than we do) brings us “The Devil’s Fauna.” When Edward Dempster-Smythe goes out hunting, he discovers that on this particular day, he is not quite as high up on the food chain as he imagined.
Big and Rish talk a bit about the fear of losing control of one’s free will and/or body. They’re pretty silly this episode, so be warned.
And don’t forget, where stalks the Reaper, there follows the corby. outtakes
Also, the October Scary Story Event is going on now. There’s still time to at least write a flash story.
Special thanks to Barry Northern and R.E. Chambliss for lending their voices to today’s story.
Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/dunesteef/Dunesteef_86_The_Devils_Fauna_by_Michael_Stone.mp3%20Related Links:
Michael Stone’s Website
Michael Stone’s Previous Stories on The Dunesteef
Barry Northern’s Cast Macabre Podcast
R.E. Chambliss’s Site
The Naked Truth on 19 Nocturne Boulevard
Final Rune’s Halloween Live Show: Tune in here at 7pm EST Halloween night or hit the embedded player
Some sound effects were provided by freesound.org.
Music was Lucifer, and Everything by Mister M, and Melancholy II by Doemee.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
October 27, 2010 at 12:43 am
The movie you were thinking of is “Awakenings,” based on the book of the same name by Oliver Sacks, whom I cannot recommend highly enough. He’s a neurologist who writes wonderful case studies of neurological disorders. His best-known books are probably “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “An Anthropologist on Mars,” but he’s got a new one out that I intend to purchase the next time I’m at a bookstore. It’s called, IIRC, “The Mind’s Eye” and deals primarily with disorders of perception. Fascinating stuff, really.
(And “corby” is based on the Latin for raven or crow, “corvus.” Barry Northern could probably have told you that; his story “Corvus Curse” is on Pseudopod this week.)
I liked this story a lot. It felt like a sequel to “Fallen,” sort of a “what happens next” bit. I thought the solution was clever, although I do feel there was a bit of a logical leap at play. It helped that we established the creature reacted to its host’s emotions beforehand, but concluding that the creature chose him based on the fear of the other animals seemed a little hard to take hold of.
October 29, 2010 at 9:15 am
Glad you liked the story, Nathaniel. Thanks for listening!
October 27, 2010 at 1:06 am
Cheers Nathaniel, yup, it’s all about crows for me this week.
I have that phrase stuck in my head now : “Where goes the Reaper, follows the Corby”.
I laughed out loud at my favourite line in the story: “Sheep feasting on newborn babies.”
My wife always says it’s much more gratifying eating a meal that someone else has cooked rather than you own. Likewise it was great to hear a production and that I didn’t have to put together. Thanks for your kind comments about my voice. Shucks.
Rish should drink more often, the after-story section was hilarious.
Mike’s story is great, and I enjoyed listening to his authour’s note, although, even I think his accent is strange.
B
October 29, 2010 at 9:17 am
Terrific job, Barry! Thanks for bringing my words to life.
October 27, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Seems like there was an underlying anti-hunting sentiment in this story. Edward so blithely dismisses the rights of animals to live, and then gets hunted himself. Pretty cool stuff.
October 29, 2010 at 9:20 am
Yup, I am anti-hunting. People like Edward Dempster-Smythe deserve a good kick up the arse. Glad you enjoyed the story, Carl.
October 29, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Are you a vegetarian then, Mr Stone?
October 30, 2010 at 1:52 am
I went veggie in my teens for, ooh, all of six months, then reverted to being an omnivore. I’m of the opinion that it’s ok to eat animals and use their hides for practical purposes provided they are treated well in life and killed in an efficient and humane way. It’s killing for its own sake that I have issues with. I think setting hounds on a stag or fox, or digging up a badger’s sett to kill them for ‘sport’ is indefensible.
October 30, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Yes, “for sport” killing, I feel, is another issue than for food, though it is worth remembering that dogs are also used to hunt deer, pigs and rabbits, for instance, for meat; those practices are actually more in fitting with natural selection as well because they select against the weakest, as opposed to “still” hunting from a stand during which time hunters typically look to kill the biggest of the bunch. I just don’t like it when people who do eat meat claim hatred of hunters who do hunt for food.
October 30, 2010 at 7:20 pm
I can understand that. My dad was one of those hunters who brought back his kill, cleaned it, and served it at the table. But I had a couple of friends who would kill things just for the fun of it, leaving whatever they shot to rot on the ground (I think I talked about the time we went rabbit hunting on the show once).
Clearly, the main character in this story was the latter kind.